Tag Archives: Social Media

Networking: When PR People Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Real

South by Southwest (SXSW) 2011

With South by Southwest (SXSW) right around the corner, I’ve been thinking about networking in public relations and want to share some thoughts on the subject.

Successful networking is a result of being genuine and having goals. Building a wide and strong network takes years. It doesn’t come overnight, and it is a culmination of a long string of proactive efforts. The payoff — building professional connections and making personal friends along the way — is well worth it.

Be Genuine

It’s naïve to think that being insincere won’t yield results in networking. It can. However, you aren’t just building a network. You are also building your reputation. Do you want people to remember you as a fake or do you want people to associate your name with being trustworthy?

One of the biggest surprises I found from my years on Twitter has been the continual feedback that I’m “real.” I say surprised because at the time I wasn’t thinking about being real, but now I see it as one of my biggest networking strengths. I will be forever grateful to my Twitter friends for that.

So what does being “real” on Twitter mean to me? It means I don’t share articles and news with my network that I don’t find personally interesting. If I share an article it’s almost guaranteed I’ve read it first. It means I don’t follow/friend/link into people out of obligation. It means if I share something with my network, I check the source. People count on you to share reliable information. If I share an article it means I almost always provide the handle of the person who shared it with me.

It means if I’m having a bad day, my Twitter friends might know about it through a humorous tweet. It means if I’m passionate about a subject, I will probably share my thoughts with my network. It also means that I listen to other opinions and stay open-minded. I’ve learned so much that way. Most importantly, it means I’m human and when I make mistakes I’ll own up to them.

People appreciate when you are just being yourself. Find what being “real” means to you and start applying that philosophy across your networks right away.

Sharing Means Caring

“Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends” is one of the best networking books I’ve ever read. It talks about being genuine and sharing your knowledge without the expectation of an immediate return. I learned about the book in a post last year from Chris Brogan who, it seems from my interactions with him, applies these same principles to his own networking. Of course as soon as I finished reading it, I mailed it to someone in my network, asking that she too share it with someone else once she was done reading it. If you haven’t read this book yet, do it. You won’t regret it.

Set Goals

Even in PR, networking doesn’t always come naturally. We have to work at it. Networking should be a blend of online and offline interactions. Some results can be immediate but most benefits are likely to come after years of work. Remember, you are not only a PR professional for your clients, you are your own PR person, too.

Setting networking goals can be very helpful in expanding and strengthening your network. Here are some things I do to stay engaged and build my network.

Attend live events: I try to go to at least one local event each month. Over the years, I’ve built a network and forged friendships from this activity. My schedule is hectic, but I make the time to do this because it nourishes my network and knowledge base. I couple this with at least three trips a year. These can be conferences, visiting a city where some of my professional contacts reside, or even a friendly personal trip to strengthen ties with friends I’ve met online.

Groom your networks: Every month I comb through my online social networks. For example, I may look through my list of Facebook friends and find someone I forgot I was connected with. I might send that person a note to say hello, or if I deem it appropriate, I might disconnect. I like to keep my networks up-to-date and relevant, and find that my engagements are more meaningful and fruitful that way.

Expand your channels: In the age of social media it’s easy to put all of your efforts into your favorite social network. This is a mistake. If Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn shut down tomorrow, would you retain most of your network? If the answer is no, you need to cross-pollinate. For example, if there’s someone I’ve had countless exchanges with over Twitter and I find interesting, I may send a personalized LinkedIn request. If I meet someone at a conference, I’ll look them up on Twitter and start to engage there. If I get someone’s telephone number, I’ll save it in my contacts list. Keeping all of your eggs in one basket is a mistake and one every good PR professional should avoid.

Be easy to find: I might meet someone at a conference and lose their card or forget their name. I’ve reconnected with people before by being easy to find online. I do this a couple of ways. First, I use my real name on most of my social profiles. When people Google my name they can easily find my contact information. I also have a Google alert set up for my name so that if any false information about me pops up on the internet I can correct it immediately. While I haven’t yet found any false information about me published online, I consider it an insurance policy and simple a way to help protect my reputation.

Keep a list: I always have a short-list of people I want to connect with. I may have tried engaging online without success, but I won’t stop there. If I’m genuinely interested in meeting this person I will employ my network to help, either directly or indirectly. This effort can take years sometimes but it can work. For example, if there’s a person I want to meet and see that someone in my network knows them I may ask for an introduction. Or if there’s an influencer I want to engage with on Twitter who doesn’t follow me, I may start following other people they follow and engage that way. You get retweeted enough times by one of their friends, eventually you may pique their interest.

The Real World

Over the years I’ve learned that there are many people who share my philosophy on networking. I’ve made many friends that way. These aren’t just other professionals I’ve met online or from a conference. These are real people I could call when I need help and who could call me to return the gesture. I don’t just network to help my career. I do it because I want to help others, too.

It’s worth noting that as I was writing this post I received a direct message over Twitter by someone I met at a conference in 2009. He was writing to thank me for the advice I gave him two weeks ago. He included links to the articles that resulted from him following through on the advice I shared. I’ll be seeing him next week at South by Southwest, and I can’t wait to hear the whole story behind this most recent success.

What do you do to expand your network? Share your tips in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you.

Media Relationships Don’t Matter, and Other PR Fairy Tales

Countless times I’ve sat in the office of a potential client. We’re having a great conversation, exploring strategies and messaging. We’re talking about where their company is headed and how PR can help get them there.

And then it happens: “Do you have connections?”

The inference is immediate – “Do you have connections that can quickly get me onto the front page of <CEOs favorite publication>?”

Have you ever sat on either side of that table before? If you have, then you know that this part of the conversation gets, well – weird. So, how do you answer the question?

My short answer: Of course connections with journalists and other influencers matter. But it’s not just about the relationships. The reality is a little more complicated than that. Connections matter, but so does context. As a client, it’s important to understand why you are interested in a PR professional’s influencer network. You may be using it as a yardstick to help gauge her ability and track record. Perhaps you want to leverage her connections for greater visibility on social media. Or maybe you are hoping that her connections will bust open a door to a huge media hit.

There are a million reasons why you want to know if a PR person has connections. While connections are useful, most of the time there are many other more important factors that will determine the success of your campaign. If a PR person selling your services tries to convince you that relationships don’t matter, it’s probably because she doesn’t have any to brag about, and she probably isn’t the right PR person for you.

Where’s Waldo?

Relationships do matter, and I’ll explain more on that later. But let’s tackle the three biggest arguments typically made for why relationships don’t matter. The first one is the shrinking newsroom: how important is it to try to maintain relationships with journalists when they might be gone six months from now? The answer, of course, is that it is doubly important to maintain strong relationships with the media in today’s market, because they’ll remember you (and all the help you gave them) at the next outlet they go to. And if they end up on their own? Then they can still be a great resource for you and your clients, for writing, sanity checks, etc. And the fact that you maintained your relationship through thick and thin will mean a lot to them down the road.

The Story Sells It

The next argument typically made against the value of relationships is the importance of having a great story. Great stories are, after all, what interest reporters, readers and other influencers. If there’s no news, no trend, nothing of interest to the greater community – then it doesn’t matter how many connections a PR person has. The result will be the same. And let’s get real, a stale story like that sounds like a bad advertorial. But a good story that lands in the inbox of an editor from an email address she doesn’t recognize may never see the light of day (or of her computer screen at least).

Hard Work Pays Off

The final argument is that an aggressive PR pro, regardless of the story or the connections, can sell anything. It is certainly true that there are many capable, talented PR professionals who don’t have a stellar book of A-list tech celebrities on speed dial. That doesn’t mean their success rate for generating coverage on behalf of clients isn’t high. They have the secret PR sauce: diligence, and most likely a talent for storytelling.

These people work hard for their clients. They may not be the person to spend a ton of time networking outside of office hours, but it doesn’t mean they’re not generating ink for their clients. I know many of PR professionals that fit into this category. So what if they don’t have a huge social graph? If you’re a company with news to share, these PR people can usually get the job done well.

Can You Handle the (Nuanced) Truth?

Yes, a good story matters. No reputable influencer will want to cover something that has no apparent value to her audience. She will lose credibility, and consequently her network and clout. Before looking at whether a PR person has connections, the company hiring a PR firm first needs to examine their own stories. Do they have something interesting to say? Are they even ready for PR?

But the story isn’t everything. Having the right connections might make the difference between an opened email and a discarded one, regardless of how compelling the subject line was. Diligent professionals will follow up appropriately when they don’t hear back – and this can pay off in droves.

For Clients – Connections are a Nice to Have, Not a Need to Have

“Do you have connections?” is a loaded question. Sure you don’t necessarily need connections to successfully execute a solid PR campaign. But they can certainly help.

Connections, and particularly a PR person’s online social graph, can prove useful to her client. And there are many reasons why they help. Let me share a few scenarios.

Let’s say a company wants to be covered in a specific publication. Even with a great story, sometimes other factors beyond the control of PR can impact whether it ever gets the ink. This is when having a connection on the inside helps. You can’t guarantee ink, but you do have a much better shot at some feedback. This can be invaluable in helping deliver the story that publication needs to finally cover your client.

Or perhaps your client is trying to reach a certain group of influencers online. If the PR professional already has a solid network in place, it shouldn’t take long to further cultivate those specific connections with whom the client is trying to engage. Additionally, having this tight social graph helps when sharing client news with the goal of getting it to the right people via social media.

Connections can also help the PR team keep lines of communication open when they might have otherwise been damaged by a client. Imagine the client decides last-minute to back out of the news you were pitching under embargo. Unfortunately for you, it is the first piece of news you ever pitched for that client. Reporters who already know you will know that they can still trust you, so the next time you approach them with news from that company they are much more likely to respond to your pitch.

For PR Professionals – Connections are a Must

Clients come and go, much more often than not completely independent of the PR firm’s results. What does remain are the PR person’s connections – her social graph.

Let’s go back to that scenario in the office. Can I favorably answer the question “Do you have connections?”

Of course I can. But will I sacrifice them by trying to sell something that’s not newsworthy with the hope of possibly getting the front page of <CEO’s favorite publication>? No way.

Where’s the long-term ROI for anybody in that?

Updating Mad Men: The Focus Group

This week Mad Men featured a staple of the media world: the focus group. Whether it’s a telephone survey, like the call I received from Nielsen this weekend, or grabbing a group of people off the street, the focus group is a key part of any media outreach campaign. Before understanding the messaging and positioning that world work for the whole, you must first undersand what will work for a small, carefully selected group.

The women of the Mad Men focus group

But today the focus group is open to everyone with a search window. You can open up Twitter and be greeted by a flood of information or check out the LinkedIn groups to find out what business folks are truly feeling. You can even enter traditional forums and hear the complaints and concerns of thousands of people. However, like the PhD who is running the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce focus groups, people need a guide to understand what they’re reading. It’s very easy to get lost in the “Rats Nest” of social media.

In fact, sometimes you need to entirely dismiss what you’re reading or, in other cases, provide additional emphasis. I was quoted in Mashable saying that the social media realm offers imperfect data. The point is, just a few numbers will never tell you enough of a story, you need to understand the context of the person conveying the information, online and off.

Coming back to focus groups for a moment, how they are compiled affects the information you glean from them. In Mad Men the group was made up of young, unmarried women. In fact, just before grabbing the last unmarried secretary an older secretary commented that she wasn’t wanted in the room because she was, in fact, older and married.

The results of the session were that women want to be beautiful to attract a man, according to the doctor who ran it, but it could have turned out differently with the older women in the mix. Of course, this is where Pond’s finds itself today, with an older, more mature demographic. The eventual conclusion that women are simply looking to be married and that’s why they use beauty products was rejected by top Mad Man Don Draper, who noted that putting out a year’s worth of messaging would change the conversation.

In the social media world, people put out information for a reason. When looking at social media for market intelligence you must ask yourself “why did this person say what they’re saying.” Otherwise you’re only getting half a story. Social search tools can help you find information and many social CRM tools exist to help you get graphs, charts and numbers to show certain trends, but there is so much more available within the social stream.

Over here at Fresh Ground we have started working with customers on a social intelligence service. That is, we look at interesting pieces of information, put them in context and then distribute that information to the appropriate internal audiences. This is how we help our clients dig up everything from sales leads to competitive intelligence.

So what would Pond’s do differently today? Well, first they’d have a lot more information about their target demographic. Then they would use that information to understand the individuals who visit their site. If they wanted to try out new messages they’d probably do a bit of A/B testing on their site to see what works. They may also test certain messages in certain demographic areas, either through online advertising, carefully located display ads or buying air time in specific programs. They’d also dig into the social media intelligence to find out what people in their targeted demographics are discussing, then find ways into those conversations.

And hopefully, when they’re done, no one ends up crying or throwing heavy objects at Don Draper.

Social Media DNA: Does Your Company Have It?

LaunchCamp divided pretty easily into two camps, companies and executives who:

Understand social networking technologies inherently; and
Know they need to do something, but are not sure what.

This divide isn’t new and frankly, it’s not going to end any time soon. In the past I’ve been asked to design training programs only to find that some people within an organization understand social technologies and concepts very well and wanted to move on beyond the basics. Then there are those who are still figuring out how to sign up for a Twitter account or maybe have just dipped their toe into Facebook.

With this type of audience one size never fits all.

But for LaunchCamp it wasn’t just a division among individuals as Isis Maternity Community Manager Cindy Meltzer noted during our recent conversation. It could also be felt in corporate culture.

During the startup panel it became apparent that most tech-based companies being founded today are steeped in social networking tools. Not just because the founders are young, in fact their ages run the spectrum, but because the genesis for their ideas come from first understanding social networking. In other words: the aspect of marketing that takes conversation into account is built in. It’s part of their DNA.

Jules Pieri, CEO of the Daily Grommet

Take the example of the Daily Grommet. When moderator David Beisel asked about how much each company spent on launch marketing, the answer came back as nothing. Though, as Jules will tell you, it was nothing EXTRA. Frankly, marketing is baked into the idea of “Citizen Commerce,” which is the idea that the customers drive the direction of the products featured each day. This isn’t a one-way system of “we produce, you buy” but community conversation of “we find what you want.”

Since the community members are, by nature, excited by the products they’re more likely to take action and talk about them.

The same goes for Runkeeper, which factored sharing right into the product. From the start the idea wasn’t only to use a mobile device to track your routes and save information about you, but to share that information with your friends. By doing that you are, in fact, sharing the product you’re using. If friends want to share back they need to get that product too. The viral nature is built in, not tacked on later.

By contrast I hear from companies that have traditional business models and are looking for a way to build social networking into their marketing programs. This isn’t a bad thing (in fact, it’s great) but it’s also just the start.

To truly engage in this world each company must look beyond their marketing departments and find their communities, then use the tools to engage them. After all, that’s how new companies are finding their way.